Unbound Mind
Less Pressure.
More Freedom to Move.
A lot of people who work with me have something in common: from the outside, you wouldn’t know there’s an issue.
They carry the anxiety or stress or pressure pretty well because they’ve had a lot of practice. They’ve needed to carry it to succeed and before that, to survive. They wear the mask with skill. This, of course, is also the problem.
A lot of people I work with ask questions about what’s next and they feel they can only ask those questions privately.
They may not know that what got them where they are is burning up the energy they need for what comes next.
They need to unbind their minds from beliefs that pushed them to success but at their own expense. They can feel the cost but can’t quite articulate what’s wrong.
It may be full burnout or a deep-seated niggle that won’t go away that says, something’s not working.
The most important part of your life is where you’re coming from.
If you’re trying to get somewhere through outside approval — believing you’ll be okay when you reach a certain place, get the job, or achieve the next thing — you can lose a lot of energy building a life around someone else’s idea of who you should be. Eventually, you can end up living in a version of your life, your world and yourself that doesn’t really fit.
If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is. I lived that. I don’t want it for you.
It’s possible to release that energy and soften the tight reins of your conditioning. And to change your path toward the life that’s best for you.
People who work with me include actors and writers struggling privately with confidence or creative identity; successful people in transition; people dealing with anxiety or internal pressure that isn’t obvious externally; people questioning the life they’ve built; people wanting somewhere private to think differently about what comes next.
Here’s one important thing I’d like you to take away from reading this, even if we never work together:
There may be problems. But you are not the problem.
This is NOT about self improvement. ‘Self improvement’ brings to life a belief that you have to be changed or fixed.
When I started working with actors, I saw the same thing I see in all my clients who are creative and have high aspiration.
When actors were working for the approval of the teacher or the director because they were trying to be picked or liked or simply not get yelled at, their work was disconnected. They would try to ‘fix their problems’ and not see that trying to twist themselves out of the shape that they really were as people was actually causing the problems and the tension.
As soon as they literally just stopped doing that, connected to themselves and let what was real come up for them, the best stuff appeared. And it was the same for them off camera as it was on camera.
When they connected to themselves and did what they loved, their lives got better. And as a side effect the work got better but it WAS like a side effect because the centre of their life wasn’t bound up in that need for approval or survival.
So what do we do in the work?
We help you reconnect with your voice and that place where what’s meaningful to you can actually come up. One of my clients calls it his Core Self. You’ll have your own experience but maybe that name resonates.
We are not working on improving you. We’re working with the things that get in the way of you being you. We’re working on connection.
That doesn’t mean you won’t experience the feelings of fear or anxiety or the others that traditionally we want to avoid.
But as the acting teacher Michael Chekhov taught, you can let the difficulty be there and NOT LET IT DISTRACT YOU.
I want you to have that realisation too, and to experience the agency and freedom that comes with it.
About Craig
When I was young, acting and writing were ways to bring characters and worlds to life.
It took me some time to realise that I was actually bringing myself to life.
The characters and the worlds were frames I’d make to explore who I was and who I could be.
But when I started to work professionally, I’d turn on myself and subject myself to harsh inner criticism, and only see my own value in performance, in being chosen, in being ‘good enough’ to earn my place.
I let other people tell me what I was capable of and where my limits were. Some of those people were serving their own interests, not mine.
I did good work. I had success, but I lost my sense of meaning.
It was when I went to Plum Village and trained in meditation that I began to understand I could simply be present with myself. Underneath the accumulated opinions, judgements and harsh self-evaluation, I had been there all along.
I’ve won awards as a filmmaker and theatre director, and spent around twenty years teaching and coaching actors and other creatives.
My work has been to maintain that connection with myself. That’s also the foundation of the coaching I do now with actors, writers, creatives and others who want to reconnect.
Unbound Mind’s purpose is to help us unwind from beliefs, experiences and voices that limit our connection and open us to more freedom and agency in our own lives.
Connection isn’t a faraway thing that we work towards. It’s here and now, even as you read this.
You can put down the beliefs and systems that keep you bound. And take steps toward the life that’s right for you.
If something here feels familiar, we can start with a conversation about where you are, what’s taking your energy, and what you want to make room for.
